Consciousness Cafe - Entheogens and Psychedelic Cultural Transmissions

Interesting story from the UK
> Magic mushroom case judge tells prosecutor: chill
> out
>
> Mark Honigsbaum
> Wednesday December 15, 2004
>
>
> The Guardian
> The law on the distribution and sale of magic
> mushrooms was thrown into
> disarray yesterday after a court decision to stay
> the prosecution of two
> men accused of illegally selling the hallucinogenic
> fungi at a record
> shop in Gloucester.
>
> Arguing that Home Office advice to importers and
> distributors was
> "fudged", the crown court recorder Claire Miskin
> told Dennis Mardle and
> Colin Evans that the law was so ambiguous that to
> put them on trial
> amounted to an "abuse of process". She recommended
> that parliament
> consider new legislation to clarify the legal
> position.
>
> It is the first time the issue of magic mushrooms
> has reached the crown
> court, though potential court actions are pending in
> Birmingham and
> Canterbury.
>
> Mr Mardle, 52, and Mr Evans, 57, both from
> Gloucester, began selling
> magic mushrooms after reading an article in the
> Guardian last November
> which cited Home Office advice that while psilocin
> and psilocybin, the
> psychoactive constituents of the mushrooms, were
> illegal, it was "not
> illegal to sell or give away a freshly picked
> mushroom".
>
> But earlier this year the Home Office wrote to
> mushroom importers saying
> that hallucinogenic mushrooms might constitute a
> "product" under the
> Misuse of Drugs Act if they had been "cultivated,
> transported to the
> marketplace, packaged, weighed and labelled".
>
> Although the courts had previously ruled that it was
> legal to possess
> magic mushrooms except where they had been "altered
> by the hand of man",
> the Home Office also advised that merely chilling
> the mushrooms might
> constitute alteration.
>
> It was on this basis that Gloucester police raided
> Mr Mardle's and Mr
> Evans's shop, Collectors Choice, in March, seizing
> four bags of
> mushrooms and one punnet from a fridge and six
> further punnets stored in
> a cool bag behind the counter.
>
> The local prosecutor, Phillip Warren, told the court
> that while the law
> prohibited the freezing of the mushrooms, the
> legality of cooling or
> storing them in a fridge had never been tested and
> the case should go to
> trial in order to clarify the situation.
>
> However, after hearing from experts that chilling
> did not alter the
> chemical makeup of the mushrooms, Ms Miskin ruled
> that to bring the case
> to trial would be a breach of the men's rights.
> Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
> 2004